God’s Light Overcomes the Darkness

Jesus said, “I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness.” John 12:46

Darkness is not measurable. Light is. Light has beams, intensity. These can be measured. Darkness is the absence of light. Love can be measured. Love is expressed in kindness, giving, sharing. Fear is the absence of love. This is why perfect love expels, drives out, eradicates, all fear.

1 John 4:18“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.”

Fear is the platform, the foundation, that addiction builds on. Addiction is because we don’t understand how loved we are.

Addiction does damage, no matter the expression. Food, drink, work, sexual behaviour are all gifts that do immense damage when out of control.

Out of the misunderstanding we have about love, we build ‘tracks’ in our brain that make it easy to get to the destination. These can be great tools for us to navigate life. They can be devastating when they lead to damaging behaviours.

Imagine you live left of the motorway off ramp. It’s not a good neighbourhood. Eventually you shift house. Now your new address is on the right-hand side of the motorway, and a bit further along. You are driving home after a long, hard day. Suddenly you find yourself driving off the left motorway off ramp. You’ve done it for years. Tired and absent-mindedly you don’t even think about where you live. In fact, you have to ‘wake’ yourself up and go to your new address.

This is what the addicted brain looks like. And we ALL have it in some measure.

Darkness never wins over light. That’s just impossible because darkness isn’t something. It’s the lack of something.

Fear has no right to win; it’s the lack of love. Actually, it’s our lack of understanding of love that allows us to fear. Learning how loved we are will always drive fear away.

Now what we have to do is learn how truly loved we are. The more light we let in, the less darkness is in the room. The more we know of love, the less fear, and its tentacles of addiction, have a hold.

In working with people with addictions, my driving bottom line is to help them discover love, real love; self-emptying, other focussed, no-strings-attached type love. This alone does huge damage to addiction. Then it is mostly a learning how to train the brain to think in healthier ways. Our brains never stop developing and learning new things, and ways to think. We could call this ‘renewing the mind’.

None of us can do this alone. We need community. By creating small groups with extremely high levels of confidentiality, trust develops. Then members will start to share their story, their pain. Exposing the pain begins to remove the shame. Shame is cancer to the soul. Shame cloaks itself in secrets. Living with no secrets and living with no shame is true freedom.

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Romans 12:2

Warm regards,
Phil van der Mespel

P.S. To find out about the PKNZ Set Free initiative click here

P.P.S. Join our men’s Zoom group this Friday at 6.30am and start your day with great conversation. We will be discussing this article by Phil van der Mespel: God’s Light Overcomes the Darkness. To join the Zoom meeting go to https://zoom.us/join with Meeting ID: 890 3222 8562  and Passcode: PKFriday